A wide variety of garment hangers and devices for joining the same together are known. Patents illustrative of such known devices include U.S. Pat. No. 351,102 to Flieger which discloses a pants hanger which includes an eye through which a hook is passed to secure the hanger to, for example, a peg. U.S. Pat. No. 1,268,416 to Wordingham discloses a shirt waist and skirt hanger which includes an opening through which a hook may be engaged. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 1,689,373 to Weinberg discloses a garment hanger having an opening to allow a user to place his fingers therethrough and thereby hold a garment on the hanger without touching and soiling the shoulders of the garment. U.S. Pat. No. 1,760,739 to Bolinger discloses a hanger which includes a spring loop and a support hook adapted to be folded upon the hanger body in order to minimize the amount of space occupied by the hanger.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,900,826 to Lindsay discloses a clothes hanger which includes a clamp to secure the hanger to a line, whereby clothing on the hanger will not be blown together or towards the lower end of the line when a plurality of hangers are disposed on the line.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,072,017 to Wisneski discloses a clothes hanger having an arched shank and a coil which cooperates with the arched shank in order to bind the hanger to the closet rod. U.S. Pat. No. 2,172,681 to Plaks discloses a pattern holder which for the purpose of separation of garments includes a plurality of openings and slots for inserting and retaining pins which may be attached to dress patterns or articles of clothing. U.S. Pat. No. 2,753,093 to Pick discloses a skirt hanger having a shank which includes curved portions which provide arms for the hanger with sufficient resiliency such that they will apply a moderate retaining pressure to a skirt being held thereon.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,666,149 to Woodhull discloses a garment hanger support which includes a spring strip which may be resiliently clasped around a bar.
U.S. Pat. No. D. 214,145 to Papineau and U.S. Pat. No. D. 270,884 to Tavela disclose apertures disposed within the neck of the hanger. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 2,499,188 to Freeman discloses a sorting reel hook which has a garment-hanging portion that includes a plurality of depressions for holding a group of hangers in a spaced relationship to one another. The hook also includes a roller which allows the sorting reel hook to slide along a railing.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,977,001 to Vitale discloses a portable drying rack including a hook for hooking the rack over a rod, a plurality of hanger bar sections and a plurality of spacer rod sections for joining the hangers together.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,270,892 to Dennis et al. discloses a hanger which includes a plurality of openings through which hangers may be placed.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,373,878 to Daitch discloses a coat hanger coupler and assembly, the coupler comprising one or more bars of wire extending through the yoke disposed immediately below the twisted wire connection between the two arms of the hanger and in which one of the central hangers within a group of hangers may be grasped for the purpose of lifting the assembly and while the remaining several hangers remain secured in their proper relationship to one another.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,528,590 to Nathanson discloses a hanger spacing device which has a plurality of apertures and a plurality of slits where the hanger necks may be positioned within the apertures so that it is possible to segregate a group of garments without crushing them.
While the various Patents referred to above admirably accomplish their stated purposes, they present a number of disadvantages. For example, as is well known when a consumer goes to a cleaning establishment to retrieve garments he has left there for cleaning, and/or repairs, the garments are usually disposed on separate garment hangers which are then tied together with each other by a length of tie which is simply twisted at its end around the necks of the plurality. The plurality of hangers is then grasped by the consumer through the hooks for transport to a waiting vehicle and then to the consumer's residence or directly to his residence by foot. When so grouped together, the plurality of hangers, due to the bulk of the garments disposed thereon, is difficult to handle and carry. This is so since, while the twisted tie does perform its function to hold the separate hangers close to each other, it does not alleviate any of the problems of carrying even a small bundle of hanging garments. The position of such a tie, low on the hanger, wrinkles the garments, especially in plurality when the tie must pass under the hooklike "neck" of the hanger and over the clothing collar and again under the hanger "neck" and across the collar of each clothing article, so that the collar of each garment often becomes wrinkled in order to carry a plurality of items. Thus, due to conventional cleaning-establishment and laundry-establishment practices, one of the primary reasons for sending clothes to the cleaners and laundry is completely negated by current methods of transporting a bulk of cleaned and pressed garments.
Furthermore, in accordance with present practices, a bulk of clothes on hangers, bound together in the aforementioned manner, may be transported by hand in a variety of methods, which most often result in the carrier supporting the entire weight of the bundles on two fingers, i.e., the index and second fingers. This method of carrying proves very quickly to become tiresome as one's arm must constantly lift the garments upward to counteract the natural forces of gravity, and, because of the concentrated weight bearing upon the two fingers, one must frequently change the position in which the bundle is carried. Often the carrier must resort, still using the two-finger method as predicated by the size of the hook of conventional clothes hangers, to sling the clothes across his back, thereby folding the pressed garments into a position which the hanger rests perpendicularly on the shoulder, thus creasing the garments at practically a ninety-degree angle. Consequently, even if the bundle is resting upon the carrier's back, the usually employed slippery plastic covering often causes the bulk of garments to slide across the back or shoulder and by the time the consumer has arrived home with his clothing, both are the worse for wear. Clearly, current methods of carrying a bundle of clothing are ineffective and needlessly burdensome.
There exists, therefore, a need for a garment supporting system that does not exhibit the above-mentioned disadvantages and allows a person to carry a plurality of garments on hangers in an easy and unencumbered manner with a minimum of wrinkles. The present invention fulfills such needs.